docs/wxQt.html

   1       $Id$
   2     <br>
   3     <H1>Proposal for a port of wxWindows to Qt - wxQt</H1>
   4     <p>
   5       Following the recent discussions
   6       and flamewars about KDE vs Gnome, we got worried that we'll see a
   7       repetition of the same damaging infighting from which Unix has
   8       suffered before. Competition is a good thing, but the current
   9       situation leaves application developers with a difficult decision to
  10       make: Write for KDE, using qt/harmony or write for Gnome, using GTK?
  11       Whatever happens to these projects, we will end up with a lot of
  12       duplicated efforts and a mix of applications written for either of the
  13       two environments. The result will not be the consistent look and feel
  14       that both projects aim for.
  15     <p>
  16
  17       The people on the wxWindows developers team thought that we might have
  18       a solution for this problem, if we can get some outside help to get it
  19       done. Let us explain: wxWindows is a cross-platform development
  20       toolkit, a library of C++ classes which provide GUI concepts as well
  21       as other cross-platform issues such as container classes, debug
  22       features or configuration management. It has been around since 1992
  23       and started by supporting Motif, XView and MS-Windows, with a direct
  24       X11/Xt port added later. Last year, a major rewrite was started and we
  25       now have a much advanced library, available for MS Windows, with a
  26       Motif port under construction. Later last year, Robert Roebling set
  27       out on a one-man project to build wxGTK, a gtk-based implementation of
  28       wxWindows which in less than a year has become sufficiently stable to
  29       use it as the main development platform of rather large
  30       applications. The wxWindows license is a variant of the LGPL,
  31       which should meet no objections from the free software community. In
  32       fact, this has been an open source project long before the term became
  33       commonly used.
  34     <p>
  35
  36       Our idea is, that if this is good enough to work across different
  37       operating systems (a MacOS port is under construction, too), it could
  38       easily bridge the gap between KDE and Gnome. The quick evolution of
  39       wxGTK has shown that a new port based on an existing widget set or
  40       toolkit can easily be created by a small team within a few
  41       months. Therefore, we would like to start a project for a Qt/Harmony
  42       based wxWindow library, wxQt. It would then be possible for
  43       application developers to write the same source and compile it either
  44       for KDE, Gnome or even any of the other supported systems.
  45     <p>
  46
  47       But for this we need help. The core developers are all pretty busy on
  48       the existing ports, but we could provide significant help and support
  49       for any such effort. A wxQt port could also recycle lots of existing
  50       code from the other ports.
  51
  52       Please, join us in this effort and, if you feel that you could
  53       contribute, join the wxWindows developers mailing list for further
  54       discussions. Just send a mail containing "<tt>subscribe</tt>" to
  55     <tt>wxwin-developers-request@wx.dent.med.uni-muenchen.de</tt>
  56     <p>
  57       You can find some more information about wxWindows at the following places:
  58 <ul>
  59 <li>The <a href="http://web.ukonline.co.uk/julian.smart/wxwin/">wxWindows homepage</a>.
  60 <li>The <a href="http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~wxxt/">wxGTK homepage</a>
  61 <li>The <a
  62           href="http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/wxWindows/wxQt.html">wxQt
  63           proposal</a>(this text)
  64 <li>The <a href="http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/M/">home of <em>M</em></a>, an email client developed using wxGTK, showing several <a href="http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/M/screenshots/">screenshots</a> of how it actually looks like.
  65 </ul>
  66 <p>
  67     <hr>
  68     Karsten Ballueder <tt><a
  69         href="mailto:Ballueder@usa.net">Ballueder@usa.net</a> <a
  70     href="http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/">http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/</a></tt>